


We could belong in this world

by bottledbliss



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Bittersweet Ending, Depends on how you look at it, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, I keep killing Karen, I'm Sorry, Kastle AU, Not Canon Compliant, Sad with a Happy Ending, ghost au, kastle - Freeform, more of a bittersweet ending really, sort of a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-18 13:41:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18700744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bottledbliss/pseuds/bottledbliss
Summary: Everybody says there's no such thing as ghosts. The ghost begs to differ.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this beautiful edit [https://headedstraightforthekastle.tumblr.com/post/184376900638/kastle-ghost-human-au] and my twisted need to put characters through all sorts of crap. Let me know what you think!

When Frank returns home, he glances at Karen’s jacket hanging on the back of the one chair he owns. She had worn it to work on an autumn day, thinking she might need it, but had found out the weather was warmer than she’d expected, so she’d ended up carrying it around for nothing. She had tossed it on the chair as soon as she came in and slowly removed the rest of her clothes before pouncing on him like a tiger. Frank had smiled against her lips, put both his hands on the small of her back and held her to him for some time, as she told him about her day at work; how certain she was that she’d found out who was the leader of the drug syndicate she was investigating. She’d been tired, but happy and proud of herself and Frank had shared her pride. In the morning, he had reminded her to grab her jacket but she’d refused, saying the day seemed too warm for it and that she would get it tomorrow. Or later, later was always an option. But she never came back. And it has been sitting there ever since, collecting dust, like a shrine to decay.

Sometimes, when his whole body doesn’t start convulsing at the mere thought, or when Murdock and Nelson haven’t beat him to it, he goes to her grave. He never brings flowers because he never bought her flowers when she was alive –one of the many things for which he curses himself- and there are plenty of those strewn across her headstone at any given time anyway; sunflowers and roses and daisies. They wilt and wither and then, they are replaced. That’s what he can’t stand, the replacement. But he has to admit he would have chosen daisies for her too. He likes to think it’s Nelson that provides them. He knew her better than Murdock ever did, he would have known she preferred the subtler things, the demure whiteness of a dog-daisy over the dark red roses Frank keeps finding there.

He realizes he hasn’t cried once. All those months and not a single tear. Not because he doesn’t want to; it almost feels as if he has been cursed with constantly being on the verge of tears, but not being able to actually cry. Some losses might be too great to experience like a normal human being would. He handles it well enough, all things considered. Life goes on, as Karen used to say. There should be an after. What comes after Karen Page? He’d go chase it, if he could find it- if it existed at all.

He doesn’t dream about her often either. Every once in a while, sure, as a reminder that even when he isn’t actively thinking of her, she’s on his mind. He has seen how fast memories can fade and he has to wonder if the lack of dreams means he’s letting go of her. But he never meant to do that. It hasn’t even been that long. There are times when the smell of her perfume lingers in the bedroom, like she’s only just left for work, like he’s going to hear the door shutting behind her, the sound of her footsteps echoing down the corridor. As long as she’s not forgotten, she’s not really gone. He can’t forget her. He won’t.

One night, after his repeated attempts at picking fights have borne fruit, bloody and bruised he stumbles to Curtis’s apartment, dispassionately dismissing his friend’s solid advice to quit being a self-destructive moron, as he gets patched up. “Jesus Christ, Frank,” Curtis exclaims. “Why do you keep doing this to yourself?”

Frank knows he’s slowly slipping out of consciousness when he sees Karen, standing over him, her eyes full of worry. “Hey, sweetheart,” he mumbles, wishing that there was a way for her to know how much he’s missed her. “There you are. Come to get me?” he asks and as the apparition starts weeping, Curtis gives him a puzzled look. “It’s Karen, she’s…”

“Karen is dead, Frank,” he says, an expression of pained consternation on his face.

“I know,” Frank replies with an exhausted tone. The shadow of his lost love moves forward, reaching a hand out to him, but disappears before he has the chance to lift his own hand to try and touch her. The moment she vanishes from sight, weariness overtakes him and all the lights in the world dim out. In his sleep, he feels cool fingers delicately brushing his forehead, but it’s only a dream. Couldn’t be anything else.

He assures Curtis he’s going to go home and get some rest the next day, even though he doesn’t really want to. Honestly, he’d rather go someplace where he could have the living daylights punched out of him, see if he can discover something, anything that hurts more than this absence, this hole Karen left behind; a broken nose and a few loose teeth aren’t nearly enough, but he doesn’t know what would do the trick anyway. He decides to stop at Karen’s favorite coffee shop, sit down and have a cup of coffee and some breakfast maybe, delay his return to the empty, desolate apartment. The waitress brings him his order and promptly walks away, leaving him alone, the way it’s supposed to be. People go about their lives and he watches them through the window, thinking back to a time when he’d hoped to be one of them, to be dull and ordinary and in love. For a split second, he thinks he sees Karen’s reflection on the glass surface and turns his head quickly, almost certain she is going to be sitting in the chair across from his. There’s nobody there, of course. Coming here was a stupid idea to begin with. He leaves some money on the table and scurries off. He won’t be coming back anytime soon.

As expected, his apartment isn’t the least bit warm or cozy. It’s not even an apartment at all; it’s more of a cavern really, but it’s also the only place which holds the most memories of Karen these days. A wiser man would have moved out. He has considered it, but that would require moving her goddamn jacket from the chair, putting it away, for good maybe and turning his back to everything they had tried to build together. Frank lies in bed and stares at the ceiling until his vision blurs, while darkness falls in the city and gathers around his heart. He squeezes his eyes shut and when he opens them again, two hours have flown by, as the clock informs him.

But something feels different, something’s wrong. The hair on the back of his neck stands up and he grabs his gun immediately. He doesn’t know who is coming for him but somebody’s coming. His instincts are screaming at him as he carefully makes his way to the living room. Apart from the noises outside, everything is quiet. There are no red dots dancing across his chest, nobody lurking behind furniture. There is absolutely nothing worrying. He thinks about lowering his gun, when he sees a shadow under the door. It’s moving anxiously from side to side, not at all like a trained killer would move, no precision or skill involved. It takes him a couple of seconds to walk over and look through the peep hole. There’s no one outside. He unlocks the door and opens it to find the corridor completely empty. Just his imagination giving him something to fight then, he thinks as he goes back to bed. It makes sense.

Everything stops making sense shortly after that incident.

He finds Karen’s favorite book on the table when he comes back from work three days in a row and all three times, he wonders how it got there and whether he didn’t actually pick it up and put it back in its place, like he clearly remembers doing. It’s open on a different page each time too. Once upon a time, she had asked him to read it but he’d never gotten around to it. He might, eventually. Since the book doesn’t fly out of the shelf a fourth time, he puts it out of his mind.

It’s almost a week later that Frank steps into the bedroom, thinking he’ll have another quiet night of wallowing in misery, when the darkness in the room stirs, a shadow setting upon him. He barely has time to reach for his gun before Daredevil pins him to the wall. “Where is she?” he hisses as Frank pushes him back.

“The hell is wrong with you?” Murdock is the last person he wanted to see tonight, or any night for that matter.

“Do you know how my abilities work, Frank?” Matt is breathing heavily. He must be angry about something, except Frank hasn’t done anything that could have pissed him off lately. “You might have guessed but in case you haven’t, let me explain. It’s not just my sense of hearing that’s sensitive, you see. I can hear the couple on the first floor whispering about not being able to make rent this month while their kids are playing in their room, but I can also smell the detergent they use for their laundry. It’s Molly’s Suds, by the way. One of the kids probably has allergies.”

“Christ, I thought I was finally free of your rants,” Frank rubs his eyes. “Why are you telling me about it?”

“I’ve been following you for days. I was just making sure you’re staying out of trouble at first, not going back to your old habits.” He gives a short, unamused laugh. “But then my motivation changed, because I caught a smell on you, around you.”

“I don’t give a shit about your motivations,” Frank tells him. “You’d better stop following me, Red. I’m keeping my head down, you have no reason to stalk me.”

“If the only thing I can do for Karen now is look out for you, then I’ll do it and pray that she forgives me for my failures.” He seems like he’s about to cry and Frank feels sorry for him for a split second. Murdock inhales sharply. His head snaps to the side, like he’s just heard something confusing and then he turns back to Frank with a whimper. “You don’t know how guilty I feel about what happened to Karen,” he says. “You will never understand--”

“I’ll never understand how guilty _you_ feel?” Frank growls. “You got some nerve, altar boy.”

“I can smell her all over you, Frank. Out there, in here, wherever you go, no matter how much you reek of booze or blood. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think she’s been in this room recently.”

If things were different, if Frank were the same man he was a few years ago, he would have punched Matt’s teeth out. As it is, he can do nothing but stand there, hands to his sides, guts twisting and twisting. What he wouldn’t give to have Karen back in this room, laughing, sticking her cold feet on his legs to steal some warmth, eating cookies in bed while she worked on her lap top; he wouldn’t even complain about the crumbs now, he’d let her do anything she wanted. All this is making his head spin. A faint, silver light dances in his peripheral vision, dragging a wave of nausea with it.

“Everything fades after a while,” Matt continues. “Colors, memories. Smells are usually the first to go. So why is it still here, Frank? After all this time?”

“You’re imagining things,” Frank tells him with a strangled voice. “Karen’s gone. There’s nothing left.” Of her, of them, of him. They stand in silence as the burden of the moment weighs them both down. Frank has always known love makes you vulnerable, that’s why he’d tried so hard to avoid it. But while being vulnerable with Karen was perfectly fine, he’ll die before granting Murdock that privilege. “If I catch you in here again, I will shoot you.”

Matt chuckles dryly. “No, you won’t.”

After Murdock leaves him the hell alone, Frank plops down on the floor, elbows on his knees, his chin on his fists. Everything fades. He wonders how much longer it will take him to fade.      

That night, there’s a jumble of voices speaking to him all at once in his sleep, asking something or asking for something, but it’s really difficult to understand what each one wants with all the noise they’re making. They sound like a furious wind, raging around him as he tries to keep to his feet. Maria’s voice rises above the rest, giving him something familiar to cling to. “You chose to stay,” she says and he responds _yes, yes and I would do it again_. “You didn’t make the choice only for yourself. You formed ties that can’t be broken,” she tells him, but he doesn’t understand and the other voices grow louder and he can’t think and he screams just so he can make sure he still has his own voice, that it hasn’t been stolen and forced to join the racket. A whisper suddenly floats over the ear-splitting clamor, silencing it with surprising ease as it addresses him. “It’s just a dream. It can’t hurt you.” Frank feels a cold palm pressing against his cheek. “It’s okay, I got you,” it says and lulls him into restful sleep.

He’s walking to work when he sees Karen again. She’s a little bit ahead of him, head bowed, a waterfall of blond hair hiding her face but Frank knows, he _knows_ it’s her. Not a reflection on a window, not a fever dream. His pace accelerates along with his pulse as he tries to catch up to her, but she’s gone in the blink of an eye. He looks around, trying to figure out which way she went, how to find her, while his mind insists he was mistaken. But she was there a moment ago, she was there, she was…

The next time he notices her among the crowd, he has to remind himself to be more critical. The eye sees what it wants to see, so it’s very possible that the tall blonde across the street is just some woman, a stranger whose hair caught the sunlight just right, blinding him long enough to create the perfect illusion. He feels like he’s going to explode while he waits for the light to turn green, it’s taking too long, too goddamn long. “Karen!” he shouts and a couple of people jump at the coarse sound of his voice. The woman slowly raises her head. Their eyes meet for a moment before a random guy passes in front of her and then, she vanishes into thin air. Frank forgets how to breathe for a while; he starts gasping and thinks he might actually cry this time. He’s growing desperate and desperate people do crazy things. Maybe that’s why he decides to call Nelson.

“Nice place,” Foggy sneers when he arrives at the shoddiest bar in town, where Frank has asked to meet him. “At least tell me their food is great.”

Frank almost laughs. “Their food is great,” he says, grateful for Nelson’s friendly presence. “Thanks for coming.”

“What was I going to do, abandon you in your time of need? Oh, don’t give me that look,” he exclaims when Frank raises his eyebrows. “You might seem all cool and aloof now, but you sounded miserable on the phone. It’s, uh… It’s been a while since I heard you use that tone.” He rubs his forehead. “So, what’s up?”

“I wanted to talk to you about Karen.”

Foggy looks happily surprised and nods. “Sure, that’s healthy. You should talk about it, about her. Get things off your chest. ”

“No, not just talk about her in general.” He tries to ignore the lump in his throat. “I was wondering, because she always got herself into some serious shit, you know, do you think that maybe…” he sighs. “Could she have faked her own death?”

“What?” Foggy scrunches up his face and stares at him in disbelief. “Are you seriously asking me that? You, of all people? You were there, Frank.”

He was. He was meeting her after work, he was going to take her out to dinner and ask her… something that didn’t matter anymore.  She had turned the corner and smiled to him and he’d rushed to greet her with a kiss. They had been blissfully unaware of the world around them, so they failed to pay attention to the approaching car with the tinted windows; the first shot had surprised her just as much as it had surprised him. Frank had immediately wrapped his body around hers like a shield and received two of the many flying bullets in the back, as the car sped off. No license plates, he’d noted before turning to Karen who was pressing a shaking hand to her throat. He’d asked her if she was okay, hoping for a positive answer, despite knowing very well that the wetness making his shirt stick to his torso wasn’t sweat. “No, no, no…” Frank had stammered, trying to find the wound and apply pressure to it. “Hold on, baby, hold on. I got you,” he’d said but had fallen with her when she crumpled down onto the sidewalk. The gurgling sound of blood spilling from her open mouth as she lay dying in his arms seemed like the punchline to the cruelest cosmic joke.

Frank hangs his head.

“I identified her body at the morgue,” Foggy’s voice comes out in an angry whisper. “I made the arrangements for her funeral. Do you think it was just for show?”

“I think you’d do anything to protect her,” Frank mutters and he must sound so broken that Foggy’s expression changes. “That’s why I’m asking you.”

“Karen wouldn’t do that,” he says. “She might do that to Matt, easily, and me, with a pang of regret, I hope. But she would never do that to you, Frank. You would be the first person she’d tell. You don’t really need me to tell you that, do you? If Karen had to disappear, she would have chosen to disappear with you.”

“Foggy,” Frank sighs and his eyes move nervously around the bar. “I keep seeing her everywhere.  At the apartment, in the street, everywhere. Even saw her at the park this morning. I know I’m grasping at straws here, okay? But there’s gotta to be an explanation for this.”

“There is an explanation, a very simple one,” Foggy tells him. “You’re grieving, Frank. Of course you’re going to see her everywhere. I do too, sometimes.”

“It’s not that,” he grumbles. “She looks real, like I could reach out and touch her.”

“And have you? Reached out and touched her?”

“No, she…” Frank realizes how crazy it all sounds. “She always disappears before I can do anything.”

“Like a dream,” Foggy insists. “Like a memory.”

“Maybe,” he agrees. Reluctantly, but he agrees. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Let her rest, Frank,” Foggy’s voice cracks. “And let yourself rest too. Don’t go back to the way things were before.”

“You think I’m gonna kill him.”

“Honestly, I’m surprised you haven’t even tried. So relieved,” he places a palm over his heart and exhales slowly, “but surprised.”

“Yeah, I thought about it.” Frank shakes his head. Karen had gathered all the necessary information to take that scumbag down. All that was needed was someone to write the piece in her absence. It was a shame, a damn shame that she didn’t get to do it herself, but Ellison made sure to give her all the credit after Frank delivered her flash drive to him, notes and all. Was there sweeter revenge than beating someone from the grave they put you in? This was her victory, all hers. He could never steal it from her. “Decided against it.”

“A wise decision,” Foggy says, smiling kindly. “Karen would back me up on this.”

Of course she would. Frank can’t help but laugh.

He takes the long way back, the very long way back, the one that goes through the cemetery. This is something he’s become very familiar with, sitting among graves at night, having conversations with dead people in his head. He’d prefer it if Karen hadn’t joined their ranks, but there’s nothing he can do about it now. If he hadn’t been so careless, if he hadn’t made space in his life for the happiness she brought and kept looking over his shoulder, maybe she’d still be here. “Are you mad at me or something, is that it?” he says out loud, leaning against her grave. The cold breeze that blows by makes his cheeks burn even hotter. “I’m at the end of my rope, Karen, but I’m doing my best. So cut me some slack, okay?” It would be ridiculous to think that she could hear or answer him, but he still waits for a reply that never comes.

When Frank returns home, he glances at Karen’s jacket hanging on the back of the one chair he owns. He feels a howl building up inside his chest, his whole body aching with the effort it takes to suppress it. “Why won’t you give it away?” a voice whispers behind him. Even though it sounds distant and weak somehow, the words are clear. “There are a lot of people in need of clothes out there. It’s not like I’m going to wear it again anyway.” And then, a sigh.

If that voice belongs to a memory, why is it talking about things that are happening in the present? He turns around slowly, reminding himself of the facts; loss does funny things to people, loneliness makes it worse, Karen bled out on the concrete outside his apartment, Karen is dead and buried. She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead. But she’s standing right there, leaning against the door frame, frowning at the dust-covered jacket before looking up at him. “I really wish there was something I could do to help you,” she says. The sound is still muffled, like something’s covering her mouth, but he can see her lips moving; shadows don’t speak. He flicks on the light switch and blinks at the sudden burst of brightness, but Karen seems unaffected by it, as she watches him curiously. “This is new,” she mumbles.

“This is crazy,” he responds and decides to take a long pause so that he can properly question his sanity.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I should start running now, before somebody decides to hit me in the head with a shovel.  
> Just remember that I love you guys and I really appreciate any and all interactions, but I am a terrible person and if tears could be bottled up, I would be the first in line to drink them.

“Frank?” Karen says with some hesitation. She has learned to keep her hopes in check. The fact that she’s able to get through to him when he’s semiconscious or asleep doesn’t mean he can actually see her now.

“Karen.”

The harsh gravel of his voice turns into a hill of rolling sand, breaking and falling apart with a sharp exhale. She’s afraid that he’s been holding it together for so long that he doesn’t have enough strength left not to go to pieces. Even though she no longer has a heart, she can still feel it shattering. She’s been talking to him all this time and he couldn’t hear a word. She’d thought she was in hell for a while. But this couldn’t be hell, not if Frank was with her.  

“I don’t understand,” he tells her. The room feels impossibly small and incredibly big at the same time. It was empty without her and now she’s here, standing so close but too far apart from him. “Where have you been?”

“Around. Here and there. But mostly here, every day,” she replies and her voice starts resembling more of an echo. “Following you to work, watching you sleep. Wow, that… sounded less pathetic in my head.”

“How’s that possible? How didn’t I…”

“See me?” Karen finishes the sentence for him. “That’s the thing about ghosts, they’re invisible most of the time.”

With that simple but not so simple sentence, everything Frank knows and believes about the world gets thrown out the window. For most of his life, he’d thought that death is final, you kick the bucket and it stays down. There’s one fact this new piece of information verifies however- mortals don’t know shit about anything. “Ghosts aren’t real,” he says, so that he can introduce a bit of reason to the conversation. He slumps down on the bed, his mouth hanging open as he stares at her. From that angle, the light hits her differently and he notices her body’s edges flicker ever so slightly, like she’s constantly shifting between being solid and being transparent.

“In that case, I’m not real and you’re talking to yourself,” she quirks an amused eyebrow and crosses her arms over her chest. “But I have to tell you, for a hallucination, I’m feeling pretty self-aware.”

Her outline stops flickering for a second or two, shining bright silver instead, almost making her glow, and then resuming its previous activity. His brain has trouble processing what his eyes are seeing, but as far as hallucinations go, he imagines he could do a lot worse. His mind is racing with questions, to several of which there might be no answer, but he’s able to concentrate and pick out the most ridiculous and somehow most important one. “Are you okay?”

“You still worry about me,” Karen gives him a smile full of affection. “You can stop worrying now, Frank. Nothing hurts anymore. I’m untouchable, quite literally.”

He nods. “Good, that’s good.” He hides his face in his palms. What is he saying? It’s good that you’re dead? “Goddammit, Karen…”

“I know.” Her voice trails off.

For a few moments, there’s no sound in the room besides Frank’s deep breathing and he looks up in a panic, fearing he’s lost her again, to find her sitting on the floor in front of him with her knees bent and legs to one side, waiting, giving him all the time he needs because he’s always been the slow one. He can’t remember if he ever apologized for all those times he made her wait.

“Seeing you like this hurts in all sorts of ways though,” she says.

“What do you want me to do? Move on?” he chokes out and laughs bitterly.

“You should consider it,” Karen replies. “There’s not much else you can do.”

“You haven’t moved on. Why should I?” he snaps at her and for a moment, it feels like their old life, when they’d argue over the risks she took and he would raise his voice and accuse her of not giving a shit about him. He has long since regretted those arguments. Karen presses her lips together, trying to hide a grin. “You think this shit is funny?”

“No, I’m sorry, it’s just…” In the end, she can’t stop herself from smiling. “I’ve missed this.”

Frank has seen that playful smile on her face many times before and it always makes him see stars, without fail. “Me too,” he says and bends forward, his hand hesitating over her cheek as his skin crawls with static electricity. It’s how touching her used to feel, sparks flying, only somehow different. He groans and almost balls his fingers into a fist. “Don’t think I’m ready to watch my hand go through you just yet, to be honest.”

“It’s okay,” Karen tells him, leaning her head a bit closer to his palm and closing her eyes. “This is fine.”

But ‘fine’ isn’t what he should be aiming for. Dead or alive, Karen Page deserves more than just ‘fine’ and he’s gotten away with doing the bare minimum for far too long. Frank takes a deep breath and hopes that whatever force is holding her to the physical world, will be kind enough to let them have this. Her cheek feels cold to the touch, not exactly like ice and it doesn’t have the bite of a cold burn either, but he wouldn’t pull away even if it did. He wonders how pressing his lips to hers might feel. Her eyes flutter to him and her chest heaves with emotion. “Not completely untouchable then,” she smiles, reveling in his caress as his thumb brushes her cheekbone.   

He has to be very careful with the way his fingers move on her; he feels he might put a dent into her skin, or what it is that ghosts have instead of skin. “What’s keeping you here, Karen?” His voice breaks. _Let her rest._ “Is it me?” 

“No. At least not in the sense that you mean it,” she says. “I don’t know how any of this works. You’d expect death to give you access to some of the secrets in the universe, but I haven’t learned anything new.”

“And that pisses you off,” he lets out a sound that seems like a choked-up chuckle and Karen responds with genuine laughter.

“It really, really does.” She covers his hand with hers and sighs. “I don’t have any unfinished business, Frank. I certainly don’t feel shackled to this place, this existence. How can I even be sure there’s anything beyond this? There was no light I could have followed. I remember being on the ground, closing my eyes and--”

“Don’t…”

“--when I opened them again, I was next to you, looking at myself, still bleeding. And you. You were bleeding too but it was like you hadn’t noticed.”

“Karen, don’t,” Frank begs. What good does it do her to remember this? And he doesn’t want to be reminded either, he doesn’t have to be; the dry, metallic smell of her blood is still fresh in his memory. Her fingers fold around his and the previous tingling sensation settles into something softer and soothing. It’s not surprising that she can do that; she’s had that effect on him ever since they first met.

“I wasn’t scared, after the pain went away,” she assures him. “I was confused. Extremely confused. Then I got angry. And after that, I was just…”

“Lonely.”

Karen nods slowly. “Being invisible doesn’t come without its disadvantages.”

“Murdock sensed your presence. I thought he was crazy, having a breakdown or something, you know, too much guilt,” Frank tells her, struggling for breath, “but I wanted him to be right too. And now, I don’t know what- don’t know how…”

“Hey, take it easy.” Her free hand flies up to his face, tender fingertips tracing his jawline as he inhales sharply. “I can’t have you dying on me,” she tries to joke.

There’s a moment of silence before Frank starts laughing hysterically, a few tears escaping his eyes as he drops to his knees and crushes her in his arms, forgetting to worry about the elasticity of ghost skin that feels so much like human skin. Karen’s fingers dig into his back and they feel like real, solid fingers, doesn’t matter if they might glow in the dark. Karen was always aglow from within anyway, bathed with light even in the darkest corners of the city. “I should’ve kept you safe,” he cries into her neck.

“There was nothing you could have done,” Karen says as she squeezes him. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened.”

“I should have been better, taken better care of you,” Frank continues in a frenzy of anguish and shame. “I should have kissed you longer and told you I love you more often, every day, I should’ve made you happy.”

“I was happy, Frank.” She pulls back and looks at him, eyes gleaming as she forces down a sob. “So happy I couldn’t believe it. No regrets. I have none and neither should you.”

His lips part and he draws a long breath, trying to calm himself down. “I can do better. I can still do better.”

Karen’s heart is conflicted between sinking and soaring. She knew this was coming and even though reason dictates that she put a stop to it right away, something inside her wants to jump at the chance. _Maybe, just maybe…_ “No,” her voice comes out nervous and unsteady.

He raises a brow in question. “You got somewhere else to be for the next fifty years?”

“Are you listening to yourself? I’m dead, Frank, and you’re still alive and--”

“I was as good as dead and you took a chance on me.” Tearing himself away from her, he stands up abruptly and Karen does the same, looking at him in disbelief. “What kind of life do you think I got without you anyway?”

“A real one!” Truth be told, her resolve is shaken both by the prospect of spending the next fifty, sixty, ten thousand years with Frank and the fact that they’re fighting again, being their usual stubborn selves around each other like they’re normal people in a normal relationship. She’s enjoying it so much that if he yells at her, she might kiss him.

“Who says this ain’t real?” he insists. “Nothing’s more real than you and me. For crying out loud, Karen! Not even death could keep us apart. I don’t know how or why this happened, but it did and you want to do what? Haunt dark, gloomy spaces for eternity? You like that better than staying with me?”

“Of course not.” Her tone softens. “But this isn’t what I wanted for you.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t want you getting shot in the throat, but here we are,” he huffs.

“You could have a life, with breathing people-”

“I don’t want breathing people, Karen,” he shouts and then whimpers. “I want you.”

The speed with which she rushes into his arms would have made him stumble back, under different circumstances, if she wasn’t as light as a feather and soft as a cloud. The two of them were always an odd pair and they’re even odder now, but who cares? Who cares, when the iciness of her lips touching his makes him melt, when her savage tenderness seeps into his bones and burns him from within, making the stars tremble in the sky?  

“Do you think this will be enough?” she asks him later, sitting on the windowsill, feet dangling over the side of the building as she enjoys the view. “How long before you get tired?”

Normally, his first thought would be to grab her and pull her back inside. Since there’s no danger of her getting hurt, he has to rein in his protective instincts, let her do anything she wants. “I don’t know. How long before the universe implodes?” he smirks behind her back. “I won’t get tired.”

“And when…”

“When it’s over,” he can’t see her face, but Frank knows she’s worrying her lip. “I’ll come find you. Wherever you are. Okay?”

She doesn’t know how she managed to find a hole through death’s barrier, but if she did it, she can trust Frank to punch his way through it as well. The man is unstoppable. They both are. They can do this. “Okay.”  

***

The ghost begins to make its rounds across the garden. No, it’s not a garden, even though there’s grass as far as the eye can see and so many wildflowers growing in it. A meadow? It’s something else, something quiet and peaceful. The grey pillows scattered around the ground hold the promise of restful sleep. Not for her though. Not for her. She’s not entirely sure those are pillows anyway. Who would choose to lay their head upon such a hard surface? What is this place, if not a meadow? It will come to her, eventually. It always does. For the time being, she has to look for him. The other half, the missing part of her soul.

She can’t remember exactly how long she has been waiting, but it must have been a long time because the sky was different when she first arrived here. The city far ahead was different too. This she knows because they used to live there, together, before her life was stolen and after. Long after. The river claimed the place they had called their home some time ago. It was a sad affair and she’s glad he wasn’t alive to witness it. She will show it to him, when the time is right. They had been so happy there, he had been so happy. He. His name doesn’t come to mind easily these days. His face never fades from memory though. The dark eyes, the harsh jaw, the soft mouth, his hair turning grey as the days went by. And his voice, calling her name. The word itself escapes her but his tone as he said it still remains. A promise. He has never broken his promises to her. _I will come for you._ He won’t break this one either.

Each day, she gathers wildflowers, not too many, and places them across his headstone –that’s right, not a meadow, a graveyard- in case he turns up while she’s not there, to let him know she’s on her way, that she hasn’t left him. The carving on his grave stone used to confuse her. The letters were all wrong, it didn’t look right. There’s a large crack in the middle of it now and it makes the words even more difficult to read. She doesn’t need to read them though, she knows they’re fake. It’s just a place for him to lay his head. It doesn’t mean anything.

Sometimes, she gets angry with him for this long delay. But if she thinks about it carefully, she seems to remember he has done some things that people called bad, wrong, maybe even evil. She knows something those people didn’t know; his heart- and even if there was some evil in it, it was never enough to condemn him. Her opinion doesn’t matter much, as other entities decide these things and her testament wouldn’t affect their decision. He’s probably trapped somewhere. Somewhere bad. It will take him a while to find the way out, but he will.

They wear each other’s marks. He is hers, he has to be returned to her. He will walk through the endless void of purgatory or the unforgiving fires of hell and he will come find her. Nothing can stop him. Nothing will.

It’s alright.

 

She can wait.


End file.
